Help Me Make This Batch Good

[Enerjex]

Hi all. I haven't done a batch of homebrew for about 3 years now, so today i decided to fire the ol wort up. I've done around 12 batches of homebrew before my break from it with varying results. I did the usual one or two stupid strong batches for fun, but most of them were with the intention of making a reasonable beer. The biggest criticism i coudl give my previous batches were they tasted a bit unfresh. They had a 'wine' like after taste and a general flavour that you could say was like drinking a beer after leaving it in the fridge overnight with the lid off. I don't think it's hygeine as I worked very hard to do that well, but there has been a consistency of these characterists in every batch i've made of differing types of beer. Now that the boring introduction is out of the way to the new beer.

Ingredients used:

Beermakers Bitter 1.7kg can
Brewcraft converter #42 Australian Bitter
Saflager yeast W-34/70

Method:
cooked up the brewcraft #42 in a saucepan of boiling water and added the 15g of golden cluster hops that came with it once dissolved. i then let this mixture simmer for 15 minutes before straining it into the wort. I then added the contents of the Beermakers Bitter can and mixed it in with the hot malt/hops mix till dissolved. I then topped it up with water to the 23 litre mark and continued to stir for a couple of minutes.

Unfortunately it was around the 30 degrees range (i used too much hot water doh) so i had to leave it outside in the cold with ice around it for a few hours to cool it down.

Tonight i went and gave it another stir then added the saflager yeast at 23 degrees, with my intention being it will start the yeast off and drop down to 14-16 degrees in the next day or so.

That's as far as I've got so far, it's slowly starting to push air through the airlock now after 2 or 3 hours. One interesting thing to note was my OG was 1.034, I was expecting higher, however I forgot to do this before adding the yeast so i did it about 30 mins afterwards, would this effect the reading (yeast still dormant)?

So that's what I've done, now I need some advice on how to maximize the result of the beer from here on. I usually just bottle straight out of the wort, slap in a coopers sugar drop and put the seal on. What am I missing guys? Thankyou very much for reading my novel and hopefully I can learn a thing or two :beer:

 

[kabooby]

Hi Enerjex,

Welcome to the forum.

1034 does seem a bit low. Have you checked your hydrometer with tap water? It should read close to 1.000.
If you left your beer sit overnight it may have needed some aeration to help the yeast. If the airlock is going now it should be OK.
If you have your fermenter outside make sure it is covered so it does not get any sunlight.
Try using some dextrose for bottling instead of the sugar drops. Sugar can tend to add some unwanted flavours.

Kabooby

 

[Barry]

Good Day
Often there are strange OG readings because wort is not thoroughly mixed ie water and malt.
Lager yeast should not be started at over mid teens temps for any significant period, try to cool it as soon as possible.
Welcome back to brewing.

 

[FazerPete]

I think the best advice I can give is to start simply. Try using a better quality kit such as Morgans or Muntons and stick with an ale yeast until you've got the whole process down. Lager yeasts are much more susceptible to off tastes with temperature fluctuations and require a decent cold conditioning period to get rid of the sulphurous tastes.

 

[Enerjex]

thankyou for all the responses! if i may ask a stupid question, what's involved in cold conditioning?

 

[jkeysers]

It's basically just chilling down you primary or secondary fermenter to as close as possible to 0 degress (once fermentation is finished), and leaving it for at least 2 weeks. Some people leave it to CC for months.

CCing helps the suspended yeast drop out, and should leave you with a cleaner, clearer, fresher beer.

 

[0M39A]

you're using a lager yeast, so you need to lager the beer once its done fermenting, otherwise you will be left with a whole lot of unwanted sulpher tastes and smells.

also, towards the end of primary fermentation, you will need to do a diacatel rest at above 20C so the yeast can clean up the unwanted byproducts of fermentation.

seems like you have bitten off more than you can chew.

start simple. do a nice simple ale, get that right, then start with the harder to brew lagers.

 

[Barge]

My advice...don't worry, have a homebrew.

I agree with FazerPete, not having brewed for three years you need to keep it simple.

From my experience, i was hopeless hitting the O.G. in my early recipes. There are a few programs and spreadsheets around that you can use to estimate the O.G. of a given recipe. I found that I had to thoroughly rinse all the malt syrup into the fermenter and stir vigourously to make sure the concentrate was evenly distributed before taking a reading. Also, you need to correct your hydrometer reading for temperature. Every degree above/below the calibration temp (usually 20C) skews the hydrometer reading.

From your description of your product, I guess the 'unfresh' aspect may come from drinking your beer to soon. You need to condition your beer so that the yeast can absorb some of the 'off flavours' produced by fermentation (e.g. sulfury flavours from some lager yeasts). Don't stress so much if you can't cold condition. Room temp. is fine, it will just take a little longer to come good.

As far as your beer tasting as though it was left in the fridge with the lid off, was it flat or under-carbonated? If so, pick up another fermenter to use as a bottling bucket and bulk prime your bottles. This isn't vital but it is a simple addition to your process and makes for uniform carbonation at an appropriate level for the beer style.

Lastly, hopped extracts do tend to have a particular characteristic which I find unpleasant. If you are able to, get some unhoped extract and hops and boil in the biggest pot you have for an hour. Only boil enough extract and water to give a gravity of around 1.060. Thats a safe level that wont burn the malt on the bottom of the pot and wont affect the extraction of hop compounds (either the gravity, lower the extraction rate; again, software is good for this). Cool the pot in the sink, with the lid on and add this mixture with the rest of the extract/dextrose/whatever to your fermenter, top up with water, pitch yeast, etc. In my experience this is the easiest way to make good beer. Ive just moved up to all grain and the beer I make now is the best yet, but a lot of time and effort goes into it. Boiling fresh hops in extract is relatively quick and accessible to most people. Adding specialty grains suitable for steeping in water also gives good character with no time cost (you steep the grain in the pot as the water heats up and remove when the water gets to 70 degrees). You get some good colour and aroma doing this.

Anyhow, thats probably too much to worry about at this pointjust food for thought.

 

[Barge]

you're using a lager yeast, so you need to lager the beer once its done fermenting, otherwise you will be left with a whole lot of unwanted sulpher tastes and smells.

This varies depending on the yeast. I find saflager cleans up very quickly whereas the yeast cascade supplies is very sulfurous and requires cold conditioning. Just test your beer after a week or two in the bottle. If it tastes of sulfur, put the bottles in the fridge for a month. There is no problem with cold conditioning in the bottle. Sweet as!

also, towards the end of primary fermentation, you will need to do a diacatel rest at above 20C so the yeast can clean up the unwanted byproducts of fermentation.

Don't stress so much about this. Yeast produce lots of things other than alchohol. One is diacetyl which contributes a butterscotch taste. A little is fine, esp in XXXX clones. Consider racking to a secondary cube/jerry can and leave for another week. If it's cold where you live, keep it off the floor, put a blanket around it, whatever...Personally, I wouldn't be worried. I've made fine lagers that have fermented at 20C which is strictly verboten if you listen to wisdom. As I mentioned before, some yeasts are more versatile than others and cold conditioning certainly helps create a crisp flavour profile but you may get away with it.

 

[Enerjex]

this is some great help here guys, thankyou very much... yes i may have bitten off a little more than i can chew but eh, it's fun and i figure being a little over ambitious will help me learn. i've managed to commandeer the fridge for a day to get the temp down quickly (much to my gf's disgust lol), and i have a second barrel the same as this so when it stops bubbling i'll rack it to this one and keep it as cool as i can for a couple of weeks before bottling it. i've used dextrose to prime in the past, i only use the drops because it's so much faster and easier, but i'll use dextrose this batch and not be lazy.